Balls are one of the oldest types of toys and sports equipment. Many popular games involve rolling, passing, kicking, tossing, catching, bouncing, or hitting balls. For children who are just developing motor control, for those who may have some motor control dysfunction, as well as for many who simply enjoy such activities, it is often difficult and/or frustrating to handle various available throwing and catching devices, such as balls. One of the problems with many conventional balls is that they are sometimes painful to catch and/or hold. Another problem is that conventional balls do not offer a surface configuration that promotes quick, sure gripping, making them difficult to catch and/or hold.
Prior devices intended to address at least some of these concerns, such as the xe2x80x9cGrabBallxe2x80x9d, commercially available from Sportime of Atlanta, Ga., and the geodesic ball shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,889,950, suffer from drawbacks such as angular holes with sharp corners and discontinuities and/or couplers where two hemispheres (or halves) are joined to form the respective balls. These aspects result in those apparatus being difficult to grasp and/or to catch when thrown, as well as being aesthetically unpleasing and non-resilient. A further drawback of such apparatus is that the holes of these balls are not appropriately sized to receive the fingers of a person using such balls.
Another prior device is the xe2x80x9cHol-ee Rollerxe2x80x9d dog chew toy commercially available from JW Pet Company, Inc. of Hasbrock Heights, N.J. This chew toy suffers from drawbacks similar to those discussed above, as it includes angular holes with sharp, uncomfortable edges resulting from discontinuities where inner and outer mold halves meet due to mold clearances and undercuts. Additionally, this chew toy is molded in one piece, and, therefore, can have only one color, which makes it aesthetically unpleasing. Furthermore, this device does not bounce well and has a relatively poor strength to weight ratio. This poor strength to weight ratio is due, at least in part, to the fact that stress on the structure of this device is not well distributed due to the angular holes requiring the device to be relatively thick in order to tearing at the hub-to-strut joints. Based on the foregoing, alternative toy ball structures that overcome at least some of the current drawbacks may be desirable.
Toy apparatus are provided, where the apparatus include a mesh having a plurality of loop structures with cooperative mating surfaces located around the perimeter of the loop structures. The loop structures form a surface of the apparatus when the cooperative mating surfaces are coupled with each other.